‘Where the hell is Lee Mill?’
‘No idea, but it’s not round here.’
‘Anything else?’ Tatershall asked.
‘A cashpoint withdrawal same day. Fifty pounds. Dartmouth.’
‘Dartmouth? Well that’s this one sussed. They’re on bloody holiday! Case solved, closed, finito. I’ll buy you lunch in the pub and then we can get back, and if you are a good girl I will let you do the paperwork.’ Tatershall struggled to push himself upright from the embrace of the soft leather sofa.
‘I don’t think so, sir. There are a couple more standing orders but no more EPS transactions. The cash withdrawal was over four months ago now. Since then nothing.’
‘They are using the cash.’
‘Fifty quid, boss? You’re joking, right? Think about how far fifty quid would go if you were on holiday here. Can’t see Dartmouth being much different.’
‘Could be they lost the card and are using another bank account or a credit card.’
‘Could be. But why, when you live here, would you go on holiday in Dartmouth? It is a hundred miles away, but not much of a change. And for four months? What would they be doing over there all this time? You are forgetting the gallery too. They wouldn’t leave it unattended.’ Simbeck was looking through the rest of the mail. ‘I don’t buy that. Call it women’s intuition, superior detective ability or whatever you like, but I think something has happened to them. I don’t think this story has got a happy ending. Here, look at this.’
Simbeck had opened another piece of mail and she walked across and handed the letter to Tatershall. At the top the blue NHS logo stood above the address for the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro. Below, the contents of the letter detailed a missed appointment at the Sunrise Centre.
‘What’s the Sunrise Centre?’ He asked Simbeck.
‘My gran was there, it’s oncology. The big “C”. Cancer.’
Tatershall let himself slump back in the sofa and stared out at the view again. Atlantic rollers surged into the bay to crash against the shore and the sandy beach looked nothing like it did in the summer, deserted and strewn with flotsam as it was. Farther out a fog was creeping in across the grey sea and Tatershall felt that the world had got just a little bit grimmer.
During a bad winter, snow covered Dartmoor for weeks burying everything but the dark granite tors beneath a rolling expanse of white. The tors stuck out like the proverbial and DS Darius Riley did too. Devon didn’t do black. At first Riley hadn’t much liked Devon either, but he hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Up in London some people fancied burying him, not in snow, but six feet under. He had been undercover for the last year he had been there, deep in the heart of the organised crime gangs and, in the end, in deep shit because he had been blown out by a woman he’d got too close to. Escaping with just two cracked ribs from a nasty beating had been a bonus. After the inquiry into what had gone wrong moving had been the only option offered to him, and Plymouth at least promised something different from what he had been used to. And it was different. Once you ventured outside of the major metropolitan areas black officers were a rarity, and Devon and Cornwall Constabulary followed the pattern. Less than one per cent of the force came from an ethnic minority background. That could make things difficult, but at least he wasn’t in uniform. A black colleague had told him about Saturday nights on patrol in the town centre mopping up the idiots spilling out from the clubs. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Even in CID Riley still encountered times when an undercurrent of racism bubbled to the surface. Just last week an old lady had looked twice at his warrant card before letting him into her house, and when she had made the tea she had brought out a multitude of different biscuits because ‘I didn’t know what kind you coloureds liked’. He supposed most people would have called her behaviour misguided but harmless. In Riley’s view her words showed ignorance at best, blatant prejudice at worst.
On the other hand he didn’t want to return to the Met nor would he have been allowed to. Since the move out west he’d got used to a more relaxed and less dangerous way of life. And, although it sounded cliched, he sometimes sensed a genuine feeling of community he hadn’t known in London.
At the moment community spirit was working against him and Enders. They were at Tamar Yacht Fitters talking to employees about David Forester and getting nowhere fast. As they wandered about the workshop and strolled along the pontoons they encountered no one willing to say much about Forester, good or bad.
Tamar Yacht Fitters stood on the banks of the river, just opposite Princess Yachts. A hangar with sliding doors big enough to accommodate a twenty five metre boat sat above a wharf with half a dozen pontoons crammed with gleaming white motor yachts. The location was no coincidence because Tamar were specialists at fitting out the huge gin palaces Princess produced. Gavin Redmond, the managing director, had a trim, athletic figure for his fifty something years and his face still glowed with a tan gained from a summer on the water. He explained that for a buyer wanting more than the basics, they were the first choice.
‘HD radar, security systems, underwater lighting, marine computers. You name it, we fit it.’
Redmond had shown them around a huge boat considerably more spacious than Riley’s flat and many times as expensive. Back in Redmond’s office, a smart new prefab in one corner of the yard, Enders seemed to be having a hard time understanding the market.
‘So what you are saying is you spend a couple of million on a boat and then you’ve got to pay more for some extra goodies?’
‘That’s the long and short of it. Think of a boat like your house. You buy a nice new place so you need some nice new things as well, like an HD TV or one of those American-style fridges. The cost is peanuts compared to what you have paid for the house. Same here. Or maybe you have bought a used boat a couple of years old. The equipment may be a bit last generation instead of next and you don’t want your mates to think you are stingy. Basically boys love toys, and we provide those toys. For a price.’
‘David Forester.’ Riley brought the conversation back to the purpose behind their visit. ‘Your employees don’t seem very pleased to be asked questions about him. Any particular reason?’
Redmond sighed. ‘Forester wasn’t a pleasant type of bloke. He was a big hulk of a guy, liked a drink, a bit rough. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of him. Funny, when he first came to work here a few years ago he was OK, a bit shy even. However, in the last year he was here he became more difficult, and I must admit I was thinking we might have to let him go.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘Not at the time. He was good at his job. Not a bright kid, but he knew his way around computers and was a wizard at sorting out the CCTV and video stuff some people want on board. But then we had a little incident.’
‘Go on,’ encouraged Riley.
‘Forester was installing a marine computer on a yacht and setting up the WIFI system. I discovered he had downloaded a porn movie to show to some of the lads here.’
‘So? Looks like a bit of porn is about par for the course.’ Riley pointed out a calendar on the wall with a picture of a big motor yacht and a babe. Bronze flesh lay across moulded GRP and spotless teak and the viewer didn’t have to guess if the girl’s blonde hair was natural.
‘This wasn’t like that,’ Redmond said. ‘That’s marketing. What Forester had downloaded disturbed me.’
‘Kiddie stuff?’
‘No. If it had been I would have sacked him, called you guys too. This was a woman tied up, beer bottle and worse. The content was probably nothing illegal assuming it was consensual, but it wasn’t nice. The thing was, a load of them were watching at lunch time and one of the girls from the office came down to see what they were up to. She wasn’t amused, mentioned the magic word “harassment” and threatened to go to a solicitor. One of those advertising in the local papers.’
‘Ambulance chasers?’
‘Those are the ones. Bloody tossers if you ask me.’
‘So why didn’t you dismiss him?’
‘Couldn’t prove he was the one. Other people had access to the yacht and none of the lads involved would say a word. Plus an audit of our own systems showed the practice of downloading porn was widespread, although mostly just the soft stuff.’
‘Hence the reluctance of the others to talk much about it.’
Redmond nodded. ‘You got it. We disciplined the lot of them and I gave the girl a promotion. She shut up after that. Clever lass, knows which side her bread is buttered. Anyway, once he got the ABH conviction it was the
